Category: social media

Protecting your privacy…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Online Safety, Online Services, Privacy and Surveillance, Risk, social media, Technology

The arrival of a scam email, a television programme on Banking Scams, scurrilous AI generated images of Taylor Swift, news of a fake robocall using President Biden’s voice, and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre’s warning that the global ransomware threat will rise with AI, made the Badger think about protecting privacy this week.

The following facts underpinned his musing. LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok were launched in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2011, and 2016, respectively. Amazon was founded in 1994, Netflix in 1997, Google in 1998, Spotify in 2006, and WhatsApp in 2009. The first smartphone with internet connectivity arrived in 2000 when life was very different, as neatly illustrated here. Over barely 30 years, tech and these companies have changed the dynamics of daily life, and what constitutes personal privacy, for everyone. These companies, fledglings 25 years ago but now more powerful than many countries, harvest, hold, and use vast swathes of our personal data. What constitutes privacy for an individual has thus inevitably changed, and, the Badger feels, not for the better compared with 25 years ago. What other conclusion could you make when huge data breaches and scandals like Cambridge Analytica expose individuals to security threats and privacy risk like never before? And along comes AI making the risk to individuals much, much worse!

Everything done online today is tracked and used for some purpose. If you use an internet-connected personal device then the world’s plumbing knows where you are and what you’re doing. When it comes to privacy, therefore, the old saying ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ was much more relevant 30 years ago than it is today. With vast swathes of our personal data held online it’s hardly surprising that bad actors want to get their hands on it for nefarious purposes. As Channel 5’s  ‘Banking Scams; Don’t get caught out’ programme recently highlighted, just a small amount of your personal data in the wrong hands can make your life a misery. AI just adds another dimension to the potential scale of that misery.

With online interactions a norm of modern life and AI manipulation of images, video, and speech becoming more widespread, the Badger wondered if there’s something other than good cyber security practices that anyone can do to bolster their personal privacy. Well, there is. Don’t post photos, videos, or voice recordings of yourself on social media platforms! Your face, your body, and your voice are part of your real identity, so why make them easy pickings for anyone of a wicked disposition? The Badger’s lost the plot, you may think, but his fundamental point is this. Think about your privacy the next time you post photos, video, or voice recordings on a social media platform. After all, the responsibility for protecting your privacy fundamentally rests with you…  

To stay on X, or not to stay on X…that is the question

Posted on by The Information Badger in Psychology, Railways, social media, Technology

It’s rare these days for the Badger to travel by train, but recently he journeyed on one into London. Unexpectedly, the journey helped him make a decision, one that he’s been cogitating on more than six months! That decision, in case you’re wondering, doesn’t relate to this form of public transport, the specific journey, the extortionate cost of the ticket, or the quality or reliability of the rail service. It related to whether the Badger continues to have a presence on X, formerly Twitter, or not.

In contrast to when the Badger was a regular commuter into London, a third of the seats in the carriage were empty throughout the journey and no one stood in the aisles or doorways. As the train moved smoothly between stations, the Badger was reminded of how easy it is to overhear the conversations of strangers, and how doing so can influence your own thoughts. The Badger wasn’t thinking about X at all on boarding the train, but by the time he disembarked he’d made a firm decision about retaining a presence on X or not. The train journey had unexpectedly facilitated the taking of the decision, but it was observing and listening to a group of three strangers, two men and a woman in their mid-to-late twenties, which spawned the thoughts that tipped the outcome in one direction.

The group stared at their smartphones throughout the whole journey, and when they conversed with each other they never diverted their attention from their devices. There was no eye contact in their conversations, and their verbal exchanges revolved around reading something on X, drawing each other’s attention to what they’d read,  tweeting something critical or provocative in response, and then complaining if someone in the virtual world countered with something they disagreed with. The group were clearly avid X users and seemed like anonymous keyboard warriors rather than thoughtful and objective contributors. The Badger felt that they were really always talking to their devices rather than verbally conversing with each other, and what he observed and overheard surfaced the question that he’d been cogitating on for months, namely ‘Should the Badger retain a presence on X or not?’  The answer he came to is ‘Not’.

A few days later, the Badger withdrew his presence on X. It’s no loss. Life goes on happily without it and the Badger doesn’t feel he’s missing anything. The observation of strangers on the train journey gave the Badger the nudge that he needed. Major brands have since been pausing their advertising on X and the future of the platform looks questionable. Mr Musk and an army of anonymous X keyboard warriors will disagree, but what’s X’s unique selling point for the individual in these days of rampant misinformation, disinformation, scams and abuse? Perhaps the Badger should take the train more often…

What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Education, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, social media, Tech for social good, Telecommunications

The Badger was asked the question ‘What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?’ during a conversation with a youngster who’s just started the final year of their university degree course. The conversation was centred on the Badger’s experience in the IT industry and was primarily focused on helping the youngster not only look  beyond completing their degree, but also decide whether to stay at university for a higher degree or move into industry to bolster their immediate income. As the Badger described some of the dynamic technological changes encountered throughout his own career, the youngster paused for a moment, pursed their lips, frowned, and then unexpectedly asked this question.

The Badger was taken aback. After what seemed like a prolonged and embarrassing silence, but was really just a few seconds, the Badger took the easy option and answered with a bland ‘I don’t know. Different generations will probably have different views.’ The youngster smiled and chided him for being cleverly uncontentious! They then answered  their own question, and their answer took the Badger completely by surprise. Why? Because he did not expect what he heard from a Generation Z person who is completely digital-native with no experience of life without the internet, personal computers, social media, or mobile phones.

‘Social media is the development that has had the most detrimental impact’, they proclaimed. They contended that social media has developed such that its content is the  embodiment of 7 R’s – rage, rumour, rackets, rubbish, robbers, retail, and revenue – which is growing to be ever more corrosive to the fabric of society. They voiced their distrust of the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter), and expressed  concern that users of such platforms are naïve about their impact on personal privacy and social stability. Their final assertion was that social media has had the most detrimental impact on the world in the last 20 years because it has undermined law and order, respect for others, encroached on privacy, and enabled the immediacy of widespread fraud and misinformation. The Badger, who was a little surprised at hearing this from a digital native of Generation Z, quickly refocused the conversation on the youngster’s post-graduate aspirations!

Whether you share the youngster’s view or not, history suggests that some developments which change society are lauded during their time, but ultimately prove to be devastating in the long run. For example, fossil-fuels revolutionised life in the 20th Century, but they have had a damaging impact on the sustainability of life on our planet and are now shunned. The Badger’s undecided whether social media, a once exciting early 21st Century development, falls into this category, but if you want some fun at a multi-generational gathering of friends or family then ask the youngster’s question. The result is almost guaranteed not to be what you expect…

‘Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Ethics & Regulation, Online Safety, social media, Technology

Some days you see something that tugs at your heart strings and makes you sad. One such day recently was when the Badger walked the leafy lanes where he played as a child.  Two vans and three burly men with chain saws were cutting down two magnificent horse-chestnut trees  – trees that the Badger and his childhood friends used to not only play beneath, but also climb to find the best conkers! The trees are still healthy, but they are being felled to make way for a new housing development. The sadness at seeing one of his favourite childhood haunts being dismembered was real.  It was a reminder that change is inevitable, that progress isn’t always for the good, and that the Badger’s childhood was very different to that of most children today.

Since the time the young Badger climbed these conker trees, much of the world has become healthier, better educated, and wealthier. The internet, computing, communication, and social media revolution has changed both social norms and the nature of childhood. As children, the Badger’s generation routinely climbed trees without adult supervision, ropes, or protective equipment, rode bicycles without wearing a helmet, and interacted with every type of creature in nature on an almost daily basis. We took the scrapes, bumps, and bruises that came with this freedom in our stride.  Our freedom was real. We were naturally innovative and imaginative when playing games with playmates, and we problem-solved and learned from each other without thinking about it.   

Childhood today is more cosseted, more organised, more risk averse when it comes to unsupervised outdoor play, and it is shaped and heavily influenced by modern tech and social media. The Badger thinks childhood is actually more dangerous today! Why? Well, whereas there was no online world when the Badger was a child, today it is a major aspect of a child’s life, as an OFCOM report illustrates.  This exposes them to cyberspace threats that simply didn’t exist when the Badger climbed conker trees and the tech world that we know today was science fiction.  Accordingly, the Badger believes the Online Safety Bill , currently in its final stages in the UK Parliament, is a good thing and long overdue.

The values of our country are fundamentally family values, ones which protect children and the vulnerable from those that would do them harm. These were the values when the Badger was a child, and it should still be that way in today’s online world. Our values and our way of life are also determined by us, and not by the huge digital tech corporations that dominate today’s world. John F. Kennedy said, ‘ Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’. The UK’s Online Safety Bill is thus doing a good thing; it’s protecting the world’s most valuable resource…

Your face, your voice, AI, and human rights…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Education, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Legal matters, Online Safety, Privacy and Surveillance, social media

In the gap between completing his undergraduate degree and starting post-graduate study, the Badger took a temporary job as an assistant in a dockyard laboratory performing marine metallurgical failure investigations and associated corrosion research. It was a great few months which enabled the application of what he learned during his undergraduate degree to real world events. Those few months are the reason why, for example, the Badger has a particular interest today in the findings of the investigation into the Titan deep-sea submersible failure. The dockyard lab staff were experts with colourful personalities and diverse opinions on a wide range of topics. Engaging in wide-ranging discussions with them, especially at lunchtime in the canteen, was enlightening, thought-provoking, and has been the source of fond memories lasting for years.

One particular memory is of one senior expert, highly respected but always cantankerous and quarrelsome, refusing to be photographed sitting at their electron microscope for a newspaper feature about the laboratory. They didn’t want their image captured and used because, they claimed, it was part of ‘who they were as an individual’ and therefore it was part of their human rights to own and control its use. The lab boss saw things differently, and for days there was a lot of philosophical discussion amongst staff about the expert’s position. The newspaper feature ultimately used a photo of the electron microscope by itself.

The current strike by Hollywood actors, due in part to proposals relating to AI and the use of an actor’s image and voice, brought the memory of the lab expert’s stance regarding their image to the fore. In those days, the law was more straightforward because the internet, social media, personal computers, smart phones, and artificial intelligence didn’t exist. In today’s world, however, images of a person and their voice are routinely captured, shared, and manipulated, often for commercial gain without an individual’s real awareness. The law has, of course, developed – all be it slowly – since the expert’s days at the lab, but the surge in AI in its various guises over the last year seems to illustrate that the gap between legal/regulatory controls and the digital world continues to widen.    

Today, and with advancing AI, an image of you or snippet of your voice can be manipulated for any purpose, good or evil. Whilst there’s some teaching of online safety at school, is it enough? Does it sufficiently raise awareness about protecting ‘your image and your voice which are both key attributes that characterise who you are as a person’? Did the dockyard lab expert have a point, all those years ago, in asserting that it was part of their human rights to own and control their image? The Badger doesn’t have the answers, but he senses that AI and human-rights will inevitably be a fertile ground for campaigners, legislators, and regulators for many decades to come…

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Leadership & Management, Learning, social media

Many years ago, after completing the turnaround and handover of a troublesome major project to a difficult client, the Badger went on holiday in sunnier climes for some rest and recreation. His family had insisted on complete digital disconnection from the world of work during the break, and so the Badger was fully refreshed, keen to catch up with colleagues, and champing at the bit for another challenge on the first morning back at work after the holiday. Shortly after settling into a backlog of emails, however, the Badger’s phone rang – the CEO wanted to see him straight away. With some trepidation, the Badger immediately went to their office in another part of the building.

The CEO greeted the Badger jovially, ushered him to a sofa, and then got straight to the point. A major contract on the company’s routine monitoring list had suddenly escalated as having serious delivery and contractual problems. The CEO said that they were being inundated by different opinions about what had gone wrong and what action was needed. They used a phrase uttered by Clint Eastwood in the film ‘The Dead Pool’, namely ‘Opinions are like a**holes, everyone’s got one’’, to highlight their frustration that opinions were making it difficult to get to the facts they needed to decide a course of action that was in the company’s best interest. The Badger left the CEO’s office with a new task, namely, to establish the facts!     

Having been involved in many problem situations, the Badger had already learned many things, two of which were pertinent to his new task. The first was that the cause of problems rarely sits with just one of line or project management, inter-business unit rivalry, financial controls, people issues, plans and processes, client relationships, requirement and engineering flaws, or contract ambiguities. It’s normally a combination of many of these factors. The second was that having a good grasp of the overall facts was essential to formulating a recovery strategy and action plan that had solid foundations. To get to the facts meant cutting through the opinions, half-truths, distortions, agendas, and finger-pointing of others, by being the completely objective grown up in the room.

So, if you find yourself having to make important decisions during the maelstrom of an escalating problem, then be steadfast, focused, and do what’s needed to ensure you take these decisions based on facts not opinions. Good leaders and managers remember that Nehru once said ‘Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes’.  Nehru died in 1964, but these words remain relevant in today’s world dominated by the clamour of instant opinion from social and mainstream media.  Long-live decision-making based on facts, because without this the future is one of perpetually worsening  chaos!

Toddlers and online safety…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Ethics & Regulation, Online Safety, Online Services, social media, Technology

Gone are the days when toddlers just played with toy cars, trains, books, and physical building blocks, and watched children’s television before bedtime. They learn quickly from those around them, so it’s hardly surprising that they want to play with mobile phones, tablets, and laptops when their parents and grandparents are using them routinely as part of day-to-day life. The Badger’s toddler grandson, for example, already runs around with an old pocket calculator to his ear mimicking a mobile phone, adeptly swipes through the photo gallery on the Badger’s smartphone, and also selects and plays videos on the ‘Hey Duggee’ YouTube channel on a tablet.

Last weekend, as his grandson sat watching ‘Hey Duggee’ on an iPad, the Badger read OFCOM’s ‘Children and parents: media and attitudes report 2022’ .  It’s full of interesting information and hard numbers about how children between the ages of 3 and 17 use the internet and social media. It brings home the fact that the online world is central to children’s lives from a very early age. That’s both a positive thing and a negative, with the negatives falling mainly under the umbrella of the following neat words in an antipodean news article:

‘We’re living through the wild west of the internet. In Google, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and the rest, we have a new kind of critical infrastructure, not unlike the railroads and telephone lines of the mid-1800s…….we’ve become rapidly dependent on this new critical infrastructure, which has in many ways transformed the world for the better, but we’ve done it before we figured out how to make it safe’.

Responsible parents and grandparents want their offspring to benefit from the positives of the online world from an early age, provided they can be confident in online safety. Unfortunately, confidence isn’t high.  With just under half of children in the UK aged 12 having at least one social media account in 2019, and apparently more PR than substantive improvements in the aftermath of  Molly Russell’s 2022 inquest, the Badger feels that the case for regulation is overwhelming, and that it’s the only way to improve confidence that his grandson will be safe online. 

But here’s the rub. The UK’s Online Safety Bill, here, has been plodding through Parliament since 2019 and looks unlikely to become law before 2024. In the modern world of electronic documents, email, instant messaging, and content sharing, it’s shameful that it takes years to produce legislation that was really needed at least a decade ago.  Why is it taking so long? Is it because politicians are themselves part of the new wild west by over-using the internet and social media for their own ends? Who knows, but with AI set to revolutionise every type of content accessible online, the probability that the Badger’s grandson will enjoy a tamed online wild west seems to be trending towards vanishingly small.   

Redundancy in Meta-land…

Posted on by The Information Badger in social media

The recent Meta announcement about staff redundancies came as no surprise to the Badger. Why? Because with Meta’s share price down by more than 60% over the last year and its metaverse ambitions a potential money pit, the Badger’s felt for a long time that the rubber would hit the road and some corrective action would be necessary. No business is immune to market, consumer, business performance, and investor realities. When a corporation takes corrective action there’s normally some downsizing of the workforce involved, and many loyal, long-serving, hardworking employees suddenly find themselves exited as quickly as the law in a particular country allows. Meta’s redundancies are a reminder that job security in any commercial organisation is wafer thin.

Social media is barely two-decades old. Its rise, as you can see here, has been phenomenal, as has its impact, both positive and negative, on the conduct of our lives. Social media companies aren’t social, not-for-profit enterprises, nor are they charities or bastions of accurate information or free speech. They are, when you cut to the chase, commercial organisations seeking to make money any way they can from information collected from their users. These points came up unexpectedly in a completely unrelated podcast the Badger was listening to this week.  They triggered the Badger to muse on how his usage of social media has changed since first establishing a presence on Facebook in 2010.  

In the first few years, the Badger and his Facebook friends followed a few organisations and regularly shared material relating to their family, local community, interests, and travel. By 2015, however, personal postings had reduced significantly as privacy awareness increased and more unwanted ‘suggested for you’ and similar clutter appeared from the ether. Personal activity on Facebook became intermittent, and then the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. Since then, the Badger and his friends’ usage of Facebook has amounted to occasional monitoring and a rare post. In our different ways we have all concluded that caution is a good policy because nothing is free in life, and that there’s more to life than being glued to social media feeds. As one friend put it, avid users are those with FOMO (fear of missing out), image conscious wannabes, and those with an ego to massage. That’s a bit strong perhaps, but it’s easy to understand the sentiment.

Richard Holway from TechMarketView  called ‘peak Facebook’ way back in 2018, and the Badger’s changed use of the platform is evidence of his wisdom. This is, of course, no comfort for the 13% of Meta’s workforce who are being made redundant. The Badger feels for them, but hopefully their skill sets will open up new opportunities with other employers and their pain will be short-lived. As for Meta overall, well the Badger senses there’s more pain ahead unless Mr Zuckerberg recognises that he might be part of the problem.

Social media: Molly Russell deserved better…

Posted on by The Information Badger in social media

Executives, leaders, and managers make decisions all the time, normally based on facts, rational analysis of trends and risks, input from trusted advisers, and, of course, the specific objectives and incentives they have been given by their organisation. In rational people these factors dominate the decision-making process, and so any niggling contrarian gut instinct is easily smothered. It’s therefore not very common for decisions to be taken on gut instinct alone. However, the Badger learned from dealing with troublesome situations over the years that gut instinct, or any feeling of unease, should never be suppressed. Why? Because it was common for those in trouble to admit privately that they should have listened to their instincts more before taking a decision that ultimately proved flawed and the root cause of their problems.

There are many times in life when gut instinct tells us that something isn’t right, is too good to be true, or that some attractive short-term path forward has longer term, unpredictable, downsides that are difficult to pin down. It’s this instinct that something isn’t right with social media platforms that has made the Badger limit his use of them in recent years. The testimony of Meta whistle-blower Frances Haugen in October 2021, news that TikTok might face fines for failing to protect children’s privacy, and the testimonies of Pinterest and Meta executives at the inquest into the tragic death of Molly Russell (see here, for example), imply that the Badger’s instincts are sound.       

Social media is a key component of the modern digital world, especially for younger generations who have never experienced life without it. It isn’t going away. However, Frances Haugen’s testimony and advocation for transparency and social media accountability, and what’s emerging during the inquest into Molly Russell’s death, seem to highlight two things. Firstly, that unelected executives at the top of social media companies have become the people who determine what is right or wrong for people to see. Gut instinct says that isn’t right! Secondly, these companies are businesses that put profit before anything else. Whereas good businesses do what’s good for the company and their users, social media companies concentrate on the former and are disdainful of anything that attempts to redress the balance. Gut instinct again suggests that isn’t right!

Tougher regulation must change this situation. Arguments against this on the grounds that it would limit our free speech are spurious and must be resisted because free speech has existed in democracies for way longer than social media has existed. Finally, here’s a shout-out for Ian Russell, Molly’s father. He has become a prominent internet safety campaigner since his daughter’s death, and he has determinedly asked questions about social media platform’s accountability regarding toxic, harmful content. The Badger’s gut instinct is that it would be fitting and right if the outcome of Molly’s inquest creates another headache for Mr Zuckerberg and other information overlords.   

Describe the dynamics of today’s digital world in one word…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Climate & Environment, Delivery, Education, IT Project Management, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, Privacy and Surveillance, Project Management, social media, Technology

Would you find it easy or hard to describe the dynamics of our modern digital world in one word? Would one word immediately come to mind, or would you need time to think before deciding? Rather than decide yourself, would you prefer to converge on a word via a group discussion? What would your word be? An ex senior civil servant, in their eighties with a razor-sharp mind, asked these questions in a recent conversation. The Badger took the easy option, answered ‘don’t know’, and we moved on to other things. The questions, however, have bugged the Badger ever since, and so as Storm Eunice buffeted the windows, he settled in his study listening to a playlist of favourite music to decide his answers.

The answer for the first question was ‘it’s hard’. In fact, it took much longer than expected to decide on one word to answer the last question. The answers to the second and third questions came quick and were straightforward. They were, respectively, time to think rather than spontaneity, and deciding for himself rather than potentially succumbing to  ‘groupthink’. The word the Badger ultimately converged on as the answer to the last question was ‘Creep’.

The word has enormous breadth. In materials technology, ‘creep’ is the movement and permanent deformation of a solid under persistent load ultimately leading to failure. Glaciers and lead on church roofs are simple illustrations of the phenomenon. ‘Scope creep’, when requirements drift away from agreed baselines due to client pressure and poor controls, is well-known to those running businesses, projects, programmes, or service delivery. This kind of ‘creep’ often leads to financial problems, commercial disputes, and serious delays. And then, of course, ‘creep’ is sometimes used to describe people who are unpleasant, untrustworthy, insincere, or are just plain odd in their habits, interests, and behaviours.

‘Creep’ seems a more realistic descriptor for the dynamics of our modern digital world than the word ‘change’. For example, our insatiable demand for resources and fossil fuels is producing creep deformation of aspects of our planet to the point of crisis and questions about our sustainability on it. Additionally, digital innovation and fast technological advancement represents a persistent stress on businesses, governments, and the public producing the erosive creep of personal privacy to the point where societal rupture is a risk. Similarly, the need for social media platforms to keep people engaged and active is causing the creep of fact, news, and sensible debate into just disinformation, misinformation, abuse, and entertainment fuelling growing distrust and antipathy. ‘Creep’, of course, can still be used to describe some people, and it seems particularly apt today for politicians and so-called elites!

Oh, and ‘Creep’, by the way, is a great song by Radiohead! What would your one word to describe the dynamics of today’s world be?